Marriage by Numbers

[ismnotwasm]

Marriage by the Numbers
Twenty years since the infamous 'terrorist' line, states of unions aren't what we predicted they'd be.

Sage Sohier for Newsweek
Laurie Aronson - Then: 'I'm not a little spinster that sits home Friday night and cries.'Now: 'I wish I would have found the right person earlier and had more children.'

By Daniel McGinn
Newsweek
June 5, 2006 issue - When Laurie Aronson was 29, she had little patience for people who inquired why she still wasn't married. "I'm not a little spinster who sits home Friday night and cries," she'd say. As she passed 35, however, and one relationship after another failed to lead to the altar, she began to worry. "Things were looking pretty bleak," she says. But then a close friend's brother—a man she'd known for years—divorced. Slowly their friendship blossomed into romance. At 39, Aronson married him, becoming Laurie Aronson Starr and the stepmom to his three kids. Then, after five years of infertility treatment, she became pregnant with a son who'll be 4 in July. "My parents are thrilled—it's a relief for everyone," says Starr, now 49. "I wish I could have found the right person earlier and had more children. But I'm ecstatic."

As happy endings go, hers has a particularly delicious irony. Twenty years ago this week, Aronson was one of more than a dozen single women featured in a NEWSWEEK cover story. In "The Marriage Crunch," the magazine reported on new demographic research predicting that white, college-educated women who failed to marry in their 20s faced abysmal odds of ever tying the knot. According to the research, a woman who remained single at 30 had only a 20 percent chance of ever marrying. By 35, the probability dropped to 5 percent. In the story's most infamous line, NEWSWEEK reported that a 40-year-old single woman was "more likely to be killed by a terrorist" than to ever marry. That comparison wasn't in the study, and even in those pre-9/11 days, it struck many people as an offensive analogy. Nonetheless, it quickly became entrenched in pop culture and is still routinely cited in TV shows and news stories.

Across the country, women reacted with fury, anxiety—and skepticism. "The popular media have invented a national marital crisis on the basis of a single academic experiment ... of dubious statistical merit," wrote Susan Faludi, then a 27-year-old reporter at the San Jose Mercury News, who saw the controversy as one example of a backlash against feminism. Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman wrote: "How gleefully they warn that an uppity woman may be overqualified for the marriage market. Reach too high, young lady, and you'll end up in the stratosphere of slim pickings."

Twenty years later, the situation looks far brighter. Those odds-she'll-marry statistics turned out to be too pessimistic: today it appears that about 90 percent of baby-boomer men and women either have married or will marry, a ratio that's well in line with historical averages. And the days when half of all women would marry by 20, as they did in 1960, only look more anachronistic. At least 14 percent of women born between 1955 and 1964 married after the age of 30. Today the median age for a first marriage—25 for women, 27 for men—is higher than ever before

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13007828/site/newsweek/


Interesting article, as interspersed as it is for weight loss and wrinkle reduction ads. Of course there is the lovely line "today many men openly hope for a wife just as much as women long for a husband."

I suppose the article is trying to be even handed, but it offended me anyway. I'm married myself, but I wouldn't do it again, not because I don't love my husband, but until I met him there was no compelling reason. (I was 33) I loved HIM enough to satisfy HIS need for union. It was nothing I needed or particularly desired. I always considered it special circumstances.

I think of my cousin and her partner, expectational parents, unable to marry even in a civil union. It lessens the value of marriage in my eyes.

The article, despite it's denials, still manages to imply that marriage and children is the secret desire and ultimate fulfillment of women and-- Don't Worry Ladies, there's still time, we were WRONG 20 years ago.

[BlueIris]

1. Egh. I feel sick. Nothing against feminists who feel marriage is the

right form of commitment through which to structure their relationships, but to me? That article is vile. Not only does the article imply that marriage and children are the secret desires and source of ultimate fulfillment for all women, it doesn't even (from what I read) acknowledge the women and men who not only live happily without ever being--or wanting to be--married, but do so because they consider marriage unnecessary, oppressive and inherently misogynist. Which is almost worse than simply promoting that godawful "women just want to be wives and mommies" bullshit again, in my eyes.

[Katherine Brengle]

7. Um...

I hate to say this, but most women do want these things. So do most men, at some point.

That doesn't mean we HAVE to do them, or want them, but most of us do, and there is nothing wrong with that. It is absolutely natural to want a family and children.

[ismnotwasm]

8. Sure

Many of us seem to be monogamist creatures. There is nothing wrong with marriage, children or commitment. However we're emerging from a place where it was considered the ultimate goal and pinnacle of success for a woman. That's where the smarminess of the article just pisses me off. To feel irritated by this article isn't just chewing old soup (I love that phrase), It's a gut understanding that women have other options, and today, many of us would NOT choose marriage or a family, even if MOST would. I wouldn't if I had to do it over again, and I love my family. I just am not good mother material. It's all good now, and I enjoy my family. We love each other. (My son told me the other day he considered me "more of a friend")
One of my idols was a chemistry professor, who ultimately did get married, but spend many years first studying a field that she loved, in a time and place where women didn't DO that. She remained childless by choice. We talked about the interesting persecutive that can give you on life.

Having a partner isn't always a bad thing, of course. My husband is my best friend. But many women don't have that experience. I think in society women have reached a boiling point. Spousal abuse, sexism and mysogamy are rampent. The choices seem to be play nice with the boys or become one of those "radical feminazi's" There is an undercurrent of rage in women. I believe we've had just about enough. Change takes time though, and it also takes direction. I don't need to go back twenty years to hear what my marriage prospects were considered then. I have other, far more important considerations as a women these days.

I always think of the women (and men) criticized either subtly or bluntly for "not starting a family" They're often made to feel guilty. Or take the unmarried women, say 50, not only will STILL be called an "old maid" or some such ridiculous name, but also things like "a lesbian" or said to be too ugly/fat/bitchy/old, to "get a man."

Unmarried Men on the other hand, while the ever popular "Gay" as name calling might be present. are called "committed bachelors"

[Katherine Brengle]

9. That is fair...

I won't deny that there are some very serious problems with marriage and traditional gender roles in our society (and most others for that matter).

I guess the trick is finding a balance--creating an environment in which everyone feels safe enough to choose whether to go the traditional route OR choose something else that works better, and where no one is judged, whichever direction they choose.

[femrap]

12. So if you don't want to

reproduce, you're NOT natural?

Given today's outlook for the planet and the financial stability of this country, I would think that women in their reproductive years would be thinking it's not such a great time to bring newborns into this mess. Or maybe considering that having an only child is OK. Of course, I've heard whispers that 'only children' aren't natural either.

Saying what is 'natural' takes me back so the days of my childhood when my grandmother told me it was only 'natural' that I become either a teacher or nurse. I thought we were waaaaaaaay beyond that.

[MountainLaurel]

14. Some people are beyond it

American culture, generally speaking, is not.

I just finished a book called The Childless Revolution, which looks at the topic. Fascinating stuff, particularly the author's admission in the end of the book that when she began her research, she honestly believed that all women wanted to become mothers.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

2. "Don't Worry Ladies, there's still time" LOL!

Of course, the current scare tactic is that higher education for women is leading to a smaller pool of available husbands. Cuz the menfolk are askeered a them book-learnin' wimmen! :eyes:

[Warpy]

3. I took a great deal of comfort from that Newsweek article 20 years

ago because after 15 years of watching a nice guy turn himself into a typical alcoholic, I'd pretty much had it.

Now the jerks come out and tell me that even 20 years later, I'm still at risk of being roped into another damn marriage.

Forget it, fellas. I'm sticking with the original article. I like those statistics much better.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

4. As a child of a violent marriage and bitter divorce, I second that

I've never married, I think, largely as a result of that. I also never got caught up in the marriage panic I saw in some other women. I'm getting a little warmer to the idea as I've realized that just maaaaaybe my views are wee bit skewed on the issue but I still tend to react to the news of someone's upcoming nuptials by thinking "Why's she doing THAT?"

[raccoon]

5. Sounds a lot like me. My parents had a terrible marriage.

My father was an abuser and an alcoholic.

I never married, and I'm sure that my background had a lot to do with it. I regarded marriage as a trap, as in, a trap that an animal steps into, and then--Ouch! Too late!

I sometimes now think I'd like to be married, since my parents are both dead, my siblings living in distant cities. But it would be quite an adjustment. I'm set in my ways now.

This article just goes to show how full of crap the media is, printed this article in 86 and turns out it was a lot of nothing. Maybe in 20 years we'll be hearing the same thing about the Bird Flu.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

6. Especially full of crap re gender issues

Upon catching a whiff of any "study" that even slightly bolsters stereotypes, they pounce on it like a pack of hungry animals. They over-generalize and exaggerate the crap out of it, extrapolate from it all sorts of conclusions that aren't even in it, and report it with blaring headlines and endless repitition. Very rarely, as in the case of the ridiculous chance of marriage v. terrorist attack claim, will they actually follow up on it to determine if there was any validity. I'm honestly surprised that they did it but the damage was done.

As for the bird flu, yeah. It could be something very real, and horrifying, like AIDS. Or it could go the way of killer bees and Y2K. Hard telling with the irresponsible and sensationalist hackery that passes for journalism anymore.

[StellaBlue]

10. I'm about to turn 27

and my aunt says I "need to get married by 27". WTF?

I don't want to get married. I wouldn't mind finding a partner, but I don't know that I even want to live together (been, there, done that for four years - and I am SO glad I didn't get married then, either). I do want kids, and I do wonder how I might make that work. Ask me again at 37.

[geniph]

11. What happens if you turn 28 without a spouse?

Does Cinderella's coach leave the ball without you, or what? I'm so baffled that that mindset still exists today. What happens at 27? I didn't marry for the first time until I was 31 (that marriage was a hasty mistake, too) and didn't REALLY get married, as far as I'm concerned, until I was 39. Is there some magical event that occurs at 27 that I somehow missed out on?

[MountainLaurel]

13. Your ovaries shrivel up

And you become barren.

Seriously, when I was 25 I had a conversation with one of my grandmother's friends about how I should settle down and forget about that career nonsense. She related to me the story of someone she knew who had gotten married and it had taken a couple years to get pregnant and how they never thought it was going to happen and everyone was so worried, but now she was pregnant and everything was dandy. About halfway through this story, I realize she's talking about her neighbor, who was all of 26 at the time.

[femrap]

15. After I graduated from college and 2 days before

getting into my car and heading west to California, my grandmother sat me down and told me that whatever I do....DON'T GET MARRIED AND DON'T HAVE CHILDREN. She had married a farmer and as a result had to have children and 'I gave him five.' She said it was hell.

In her day, there were so few choices. Conforming isn't something to strive for.

[MountainLaurel]

16. My mom's reaction

To this woman's comments: "You'd think with the marital problems Nelly's kids have had, she'd be the last person advocating young marriage."

[melnjones]

17. In my family,

I'm an old maid at age 25. Amish family background. I'm currently the oldest single female on either side of the family (except for two aunts who never married...Oh the old maids that they are!), with probably around 50 cousins total in the family. I feel the pressure and I hate it. This last year has been a year of discovery as I realized that it's OK to not want to marry, even to acknowledge that PERHAPS marriage isn't my lot in life and that's not a bad thing. I hate the whole "well you're still young" line that people constantly feed me. So I should spend the next ten years of my life hoping for and planning on something that may or may not ever happen? That sounds logical...NOT. I am a homeowner. I am working on a masters. I live in a "rough" neighborhood as a single female. I'm happy with life, and screw anyone who feels "sorry" for me. If God has a husband in line for me, I'm sure I will have a wonderful marriage and be quite happy...However, life can be and should be fulfilling regardless of my marital status.